Flooded cities the new normal

Nature’s bounty should normally bring tears of joy, especially monsoon-rain dependent India which looks up to the sky for food production and water. Thanks to changing climatic patterns due to global warming, the bounty of rains tends to come down in short, sharp bursts, leading to extreme events, making the flooding of cities and rural areas an annual feature. Urban hubs are the worst sufferers in waterlogged infrastructure.

Patna’s state today is symbolic of the apathy in Bihar where chief minister Nitish Kumar has been on the gaddi for 15 years now and whose administration should have done something about the capital. His deputy, Sushil Kumar Modi, had to be rescued from neck-deep water from the first floor of his house in Rajendra Nagar. That should give him firsthand experience of the plight his fellow Biharis face not just in Patna, but in all towns along the Ganga banks.

Mega-cities worldwide suffer flooding at times, but the rate of recovery is quick. It’s only in India that water has to be regularly pumped out of flooded cities and regions. Our Venice-like cities, such as Mumbai, seem to resemble images straight out of Hollywood, projecting dystopian cities struck by deluges of biblical proportions. But this has become the new normal each monsoon season.

The civic nightmare can be blamed on unplanned growth which, however, is normal because it allows corruption by politicians and bureaucrats to flourish. People are unable to buy food or medicines and go without power as they wait for the natural process of water to drain. Does this look like a 21st century existence with at least 1,000 lives lost to the monsoons and the summer heat, year after year.